Creating a “best of” list is always a dicey proposition, as many writers can attest. As soon as the list is published online, someone has to pop up in the comments to say: “How could you leave out my favorite?” or “Since you included this, there is no way I can trust your list”. The rage at such lists is part of what makes them so popular; people skim the selections hoping to have their own opinions ratified, and if they are not, well, look out.
It’s even harder when the list is a permanent object like a book. Just look at Taschen’s Favorite TV Shows, the coffee table book giant’s compilation of the top shows of the past 25 years. Taschen gets away from the “best of” debate by claiming that the shows are, instead, its favorites – and since there is no accounting for taste, the writers hope the book-buying public doesn’t try to account for theirs.
If it only had a rope attached, the giant, 748-page oversized book could be used as an anchor for a small craft, but mostly it will just weigh down the end tables and bookshelves of TV addicts. There are some obvious selections that such a book couldn’t be published without – The Simpsons, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos – and all of those are included here, with 60 other shows.
Each program gets a handful of pages explaining why it is included in the list and going over the basics of character, plot, influence and other details that make it important. This being a coffee table book, there are far more pictures than words; it relies mostly on old promo photos as well as high-resolution screen captures of some of the most classic scenes. They’re interspersed with quotes from the show, which are fun to cruise through but always seem to fall short of any of the show’s most memorable quotes. In the entry for Seinfeld, a show with so many additions to the pop culture lexicon, there isn’t a “no soup for you” or “I’m the master of my domain” to be found. I can’t even remember which episodes any of the Sex and the City quotes are from, and I’ve seen all of those episodes at least five (OK, 10) times.
The writing, by a few dozen professors, entertainment journalists and other professional lovers of the medium, isn’t going to win any Pulitzers and the information in the entries doesn’t contain any factoids that even a casual fan wouldn’t know. As for those programs that the reader has never watched, why would she want to read about those when they’re probably streaming on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon? A real TV nut is going to take the time to watch them.
Yes, this is a book made for flipping through, though it is so large that casually meandering through without losing circulation in your thighs is a bit of a challenge. The layout and paper quality for this $69.99 doorstop are both absolutely superb, but since it is made for leisurely viewing rather than cover-to-cover consumption, the biggest discussion to be had about Taschen’s Favorite TV Shows is about what did and did not make the cut.
The list tends towards critical favorites (The Wire, Twin Peaks, Homicide, Arrested Development, Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, Rome, Louie) as well as popular favorites (The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, CSI). Those are all deserving of spots on the list – well, maybe not Two and a Half Men. There are even a few well-deserved cult shows (Firefly, Veronica Mars, Battlestar Galactica).
But there are some head-scratchers. Bored to Death was great, but isn’t it too slight to be forever enshrined in such a way? Revenge and Glee had great first seasons but immolated themselves so spectacularly afterwards, do they still deserve recognition? Do we really need to include miniseries Mildred Pierce and Band of Brothers? Will anyone remember Dollhouse or Magic City in five years? Does anyone remember them now?
Then we could get into all the shows left out of the book (Friday Night Lights, ER, The Good Wife, and any and all reality shows) and really get into a good discussion of how the list is created. But TV is now such a vast enterprise that it is nearly impossible to try to distill it into a book at all, no matter how big or selective. Still, Taschen gave it a go and the result – comprehensive if shallow, beautiful if flawed – is as good as we’re ever going to get. And at least it gives small-screen fanatics something to argue about.
